Adelaide’s celebration of cultural and creative diversity, WOMADelaide will return to the city’s Botanic Park from March 11-14.
Ongoing uncertainty surrounding international travel means the 2022 event will comprise mainly Australian-based musicians, but WOMADelaide director, Ian Scobie said audiences can still expect “the extraordinarily diverse, global music flavours for which the festival is renowned”.
After pandemic restrictions saw the annual world music festival reimagined as a series of four seated sunset concerts this year, the event will be returned to its original seven-stage format.
The event has in the past attracted audiences up to 95,000 but in 2022, numbers will be reduced from 25,000 a day to 18,000 a day with everyone, including festival-goers, artists, staff, and stall holders all being required to be fully vaccinated.
This includes anyone over 16 years of age and festival-goers must show proof of vaccination by ticking a check box when purchasing tickets as a requirement for attending.
“Essentially, in going back to Botanic Park, albeit with reduced capacity to 18,000 a day, we just feel that from an OH&S point of view – both in terms of the staff and artists and audience – that we must make a blanket rule that essentially anyone at the event has to be fully vaccinated,” Scobie says.
Director Scobie said like other event organisers, including the Adelaide Festival, WOMADelaide’s preference would be for the South Australian Government to mandate double vaccination for those attending festivals and major events:
“But we can’t wait for that, we have to put tickets on sale,” he said.
“We felt that from that point, when we put tickets on sale, we need to be very clear that people will have to be vaccinated to attend.”
The line-up for the 2022 event is expected to be announced later this month.
Mike Parker-Brown is a UK-trained and qualified journalist and an award-winning travel communicator with more than 30 years experience.
Since 2002, Mike has worked as a freelance writer and PR consultant providing his services to major organisations in Australia and internationally in the tourism, aviation, hospitality, recruitment and export marketing sectors.
